Search - Don Ewell :: Free N Easy

Great Piano!

B. D. Tutt | London, UK. | 06/10/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is the third and final of Don Ewell's 1956 - 57 Good Time Jazz albums to be re-issued on CD. As with the others, it features a mixture of solo piano, trio and quartet performances involving Ewell, Darnell Howard, Minor Hall and Pops Foster.The quartet tracks are all good, whilst the trio performance of "Blue Turning Grey" is taken at a livelier tempo than usual. As in the other albums, Darnell Howard is in fine form throughout.However, the highlight of the CD are Ewell's piano solos. From the original album come outstanding stride versions of "Just You, Just Me," & "Lulu's Back in Town", plus "Ain't Misbehavin", Jelly Roll Morton's "Chicago Breakdown" and, least effectively, "Of All the Wrongs".In addition, the album includes four solos recorded by Ewell in 1947, when the influence of Jelly Roll Morton on his playing was at its height. "Rumpus Rag" is a Morton style original, whilst "Parlor Social" is a stomping tribute to James P. Johnson and the Harlem stride pianists. "Muskrat Ramble" is given an unusual solo outing, and the CD finishes with Morton's "Wild Man Blues". Ewell captures Morton's simultaneously hard-hitting and bittersweet style and touch so uncannily that at first hearing, it could be a late period performance by Morton himself. No-one else has come so close to replicating Morton as Ewell does here.This is a fine CD, and the inclusion of the 1947 tracks makes it an almost definitive record of Ewell's great but under-appreciated talents. No lover of traditional jazz piano should be without this disc."